With around 135 countries banning the death penalty (refer also to our international section for a US perspective), it’s clear that this mode of punishment is considered inhumane. In 2007, only 24 countries, including India, carried out executions. Recently, Amnesty International India’s study on death penalty revealed shocking figures. The study, which states that the ‘system is riddled with fatal flaws’, shows how in 2006 and 2007, around 140 people were executed for some or the other crime in India. After analysis of around 700 Supreme Court judgements in the last 50 years, the report gave a statement that “judicial system in India failed to meet international laws on the death penalty,” and that the penalty has followed arbitrarily, rather than in the rarest of rare cases. ‘Errors in consideration of evidence’, and inadequate legal representation are also reported. Worse is that different benches of the Supreme Court have treated similar cases differently. The report also claims that innocent and worse-off people (economically) have been sentenced to death on fabricated evidence. Amnesty’s report has the power to raise more hackles than they might have bargained for. But let’s not forget, we’ve happily hanged 140! Uhh...